


Within the Shadow's Veil

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fae, Angst, Injury, M/M, Shifting Time, The Tesseract (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 08:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3061394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a young boy, he sat looking out frost covered windowpanes from his sick bed in Brooklyn.  But Steve knew when the frosts touched the ground with silver crystals that it would be the time of his quiet friends, his secret friends. They would come and visit him and dance on the windowpanes. He called them the  Fae and they would sometimes sing him to sleep during fevered dreams. Over the years the Fae would follow him, protect him, change his life. The Queen of the Fae promised him her son, her Consort promised him death.....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within the Shadow's Veil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tastyboots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastyboots/gifts).



> Tastyboots asked for something in the Fae AU. I wasn't familiar with the Fae stories that were referenced, but I hope this hits the spot as far as Fae stories are concerned. I hope you like it!!
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful mods for putting this challenge together. It was fun.

CHAPTER 1: Then

As a young boy, he sat looking out frost covered windowpanes from his sick bed in Brooklyn. His mother would fuss over him, his friend Bucky would worry about him and try to keep him company all the long days of winter. But Steve knew when the frosts touched the ground with silver crystals that it would be the time of his quiet friends, his secret friends. They would come and visit him and dance on the windowpanes. He called them the Fae and they would sometimes sing him to sleep during fevered dreams.

Once, while terribly ill with his second bout of pneumonia in as many months, he confessed to his mother about the Fae surrounding him in the room. They were all concerned, their wings withered because of his deteriorating health. When he told his mother, she looked stricken and hushed him.

"No, sweetheart, don't say these things. The Fae will come and steal you away. They'll come and what will become of my little boy? I'll have a Changeling instead."

She dabbed his forehead with a cold cloth and tried to ease the pain that each breath gave him. When she left to fetch some steaming water to unclog his lungs, one of the Fae – with large anthers, and flowers streaming from his hair leaned down and whispered, “I have plans for you.”

“Will you take me away? Will you give my mother a Changeling instead?”

The Fae’s hand reached out and stroked his cheek. “Oh no, young one, you are not to be changed, but you are to change everything to my design.”

He hadn’t a clue what the anthered Fae meant, but the others in the room twittered about and their wings fluttered, taking on a little color from their gray drawn look. 

“I wish you would,” Steve said and he hated himself for saying it. It wasn’t that he wanted to go with his friends to their secret places, but that he wanted not to hurt his mother anymore. He knew she struggled and tried her best, but if he hadn’t always been sick, she might have an easier life. A Changeling would help her, a changeling wouldn’t lie in bed all day.

“We cannot sweet one,” another of the Fae said. He often called her Nature because she reminded him of Mother Nature with her long tendrils of hair where animals scampered about and her eyes looked like worlds, and her skin like the grasses and meadows he’d read about so many times in his sick bed. “You are to stay here, you are to open doors.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he’d said and the pain in his chest returned until he coughed and tears streaked down his face. 

His mother nursed him well again. His Fae friends surrounded him, they peeked out of alley ways when he fought bullies and sometimes they would trip one or two to help him. They wanted him to run away – but he never did. 

Sometimes he thought they might be proud of him. His mother would cry when she’d see his split lip or black eye. Bucky grumbled and shook his head. He only thought of it as training for when he would join the army like his Da. He needed to join up, do the right thing. He thought if he joined the army he might learn how to fight. He thought maybe he needed that to save the Fae. 

“One day, you will help my son. One day, you will save him.” Nature encouraged him. Her mate, the one with the anthers and flowers rustled in agitation. 

Steve worked hard and studied diligently. He never spoke of his Fae friends and realized quite early in life that they could only be seen by him. He never knew why he was picked to see them. Sometimes he would think he was insane, other times he knew he only fantasized the whole lot of them. 

At night, sometimes, he would dream of Bucky. When he grew older the dreams became more intimate and he would shy away from Bucky during the day times. Bucky had no interest in him in _that way_ and he knew he was broken somehow.

He begged the Fae to help him. “Make it right. Make me right.”

“There is nothing to fix,” Nature said to him as her mate scowled in the background. 

“Yes there is,” Steve said and he knew even as a teenager that his wants and desires weren’t typical, weren’t what all the other boys talked about when they’d get a smoke outside in the schoolyard after classes. “Please, fix me.”

“You will be myth, you will be destine. You will be the one he will destroy himself over.”

The last startled Steve and he shook his head. “Then why?”

Nature turned her back on him then and the others fluttered around the room, changing into their miniature forms. He’d learned long again that they would do this when frightened or stressed. 

“Tell me?”

“There is another time,” Nature said. “My son will be hunted, and you will save him.”

“Another time?”

Her mate swished his anthers and streams of dried flowers fell about his feet. Shifting, her mate left into the shadows, the place they called the Veil.

“We must tell him now, if we do not, he will lose his way and he will not see us again,” Nature said and she noted how ill at ease the others were. She knelt at Steve’s feet in the middle of the dark. She glowed. “Listen, and listen well. My son, my son is a human but not. He is Fae but not. One of our lot, will not agree, he will come after him.” And here she looked behind her where her mate had disappeared. “A Fae will try and destroy him. You will save him, after he saves you.”

None of it made sense, but Steve had learned through the years that the Fae gave out their information in buckets that never added up and always needed to be sorted. It would take more than one conversation to understand their meaning. Something clear, though, hit him. “He’s both isn’t he? He’s Fae and human.”

Nature only smiled in response. “It is truth. You will love him, he will love you.” 

“But he destroys everything?”

“Not everything. But it may not be.”

“So everything isn’t destine? Everything isn’t set in stone?” Steve measured her response, careful to understand her.

She shook her head. “Only some things, little one, only some things.” Her voice was sad and broken. He wanted to ask why, but did not try.

Over the years the Fae came and went and he grew, but not by much. The world sunk into war again and his best buddy ended up where he wanted to go. Steve watched from the sidelines and Nature encouraged him, told him to keep trying. He would find a way. He only asked her when he would meet her son. When would he love someone? 

“Is that all you want?” Her mate asked him, with scorn in his red blood eyes. 

“No.” He felt small under the weight of the anthered Fae.

“Then why do you ask?”

He didn’t answer, the thunder of his voice shook Steve to his core. He only wanted to know because they wouldn’t tell him if he got into the army or not. They only pushed him along. He dreamed of going over to Europe, of doing the right thing, of helping people. He wanted to know that his life had purpose.

“Yours does.”

“It has to be more than saving one person.”

“Why does it have to be more than that?” Nature asked. “Sometimes life is the biggest in the smallest moments.”

He thought on that for a while and then he went on a double date with Bucky, because he didn’t know what the hell else to do anymore. He ended up meeting Doctor Erskine and the Fae shivered and giggled in the background when he answered the good doctor’s questions. 

He entered the army and thought the Fae abandoned him because they didn’t visit during his weeks at boot camp. They ignored him. Even when he called out and asked for help. Even when Hodge and his buddies beat him. Nothing stopped them. But the Fae stayed quiet until Erskine left him alone after sharing his stories and almost a drink with him.

The anthered Fae appeared, his eyes a terrible storm. He breathed hot and rotten over Steve. He spoke. “You will confront my son, he will try and kill you.”

Steve eased away from the nightmare Fae. Of all the Fae that surrounded him, this one scared him – terrified him. This one Steve knew wasn’t right. “I thought he would love me.”

The anthered Fae threw back his massive head and the flowers turned brown and dripped spoiled muck over him. “The one to love you will not be my son. My son is made of blood and stone; his face is a horror. He will hunt you, and you will hunt him. He will lead to your demise.”

Steve swallowed down his fears and only nodded. What was there to say to nightmare predictions? He seriously hoped at that point in his life his hallucinations would have faded away. They did not. Maybe the chamber with Project Rebirth would cause them to disappear?

It did not.

The Fae celebrated all around him when he stepped out of the chamber. Nature without her mate smiled at Steve, but her eyes grew tired and her heart heavy. 

Throughout the war, there were always Fae trailing behind him, beside him, in front of him. They warned him when there were dangers. Everyone thought he’d gained a preternatural sense about dangers along with the serum. Although anytime, he faced the Red Skull, the Fae huddled in corners, or disappeared into the in between shadows of the world, the Veil. 

The final confrontation with the Red Skull swirled about him in lavenders and blues of the tesseract, the glow ethereal and frigid. Screams from the Red Skull, the cube flashed brilliant and bright throughout the aircraft. He couldn’t even see the light of the Fae, they had always been his beacon, but they faded in the shadows, deep and dark. And then Red Skull was gone and all about him the light show of the tesseract swirled and pierced through the very hull of the ship, through his own flesh into his chest and he felt the sizzle of it. Gritting his teeth, he withstood it. It whispered away into only an echo.

When he said his final words to Peggy as he forced the plane down, only Nature visited him. She didn’t stop him and he didn’t ask about the long lost love he never found. Things were not always destine to be, and he had to find his own path. 

CHAPTER 2: Now  
He wakes as something light and soft tickles at his lips. Blinking, he surveys his surroundings. He’s not in the plane, the water isn’t rushing in at him and the cold isn’t devouring his bones, chewing at it with a corroding energy. It’s comfortable and there’s a breeze moving over him, warm and tender. He’s in the middle of a grassy meadow, with long wild flowers and a riot of color all around him. The sky is a run of colors like watercolors thrown haphazardly at a wet canvas. 

He sits up and notices he’s not in his uniform anymore. He’s in a simple t-shirt and pants. He has no shoes on and his dogtags aren’t anywhere to be found. He thinks maybe he’s found heaven.

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

Turning around, Steve finds the Fae mother, Nature, standing near the edge of the grassy patch. “This isn’t heaven?”

She laughs and a flight of birds, white and fluttering, takes to the air. “No, child, it is not your heaven. It is my home, my place. You have passed into the Veil of the Fae’s world. From the shadows of your world, you have fallen into ours.”

“I’m not sure-.” He looks down at his hands and frowns. “I’m not sure what you mean.” Near the edges of his vision he still sees the flicker of the tesseract. “What happened?”

“You very nearly died,” Nature says and walks toward him. The furry creatures inhabiting her hair and trailing along her robes twitter and skitter. 

“Died?” He remembers then the cold water rushing, the force of the nose of the plane crashing into him, the overwhelming sense of urgency yet quietude as everything darkened and he fell into the abyss. The world tilts about him and he grabs hold of the ground, steadies himself as he tries to compel the horizon to right itself.

She’s there, close to him. “Shush, now. There’s no need for that. You’re safe here. For a while. But you must take this.” She offers him a chain with a small coin attached. “Put it on.”

“What is it?”

“It will shield you, it will protect you in our realm. If you stay here without it, you would surely perish. It would take some time, but the food would not nourish you, and the water would never quench your thirst. But never know it.” She places the chain around his neck. “This will protect you, hide you, shield you.”

“Hide me?” Steve asks.

“From the Consort.”

“But I thought he was with you,” Steve replies. It doesn’t make sense how very angry her mate has been with him. Why would her mate send his son after Steve?

“He’s angry with me, so very angry,” Nature says but doesn’t explain further. 

He realizes the reason almost immediately. “Your son, the one I was supposed to fall in love with, he isn’t your husband’s son?”

Nature offers him a chagrined smile. “Sweet one, he isn’t my husband, that is not our way. But you are correct, my son is not his son. And his son is not my son.”

Steve looks off into the wood around them. There are flowering trees, and drifts of petals on the wind. “I’m sorry I didn’t live to meet your son, I’m sorry it didn’t happen.” He’s sorry for many things, for losing Bucky, for breaking Peggy’s heart. 

She giggles like a school girl and this draws Steve’s attention back. “Oh no, young one, you will still meet my son. He’s here.”

“I don’t-.”

“He’s here, living another life within the cycle before his life,” Nature says. “Would you like to meet him?”

Unsure of what she means, Steve only nods, because he’s learned over the years that the Fae can be fickle and strange creatures. He climbs to his feet, and she guides him through the path to the woods. It is thick and gnarled, but not frightening. There’s a special feel about it like Spring.

“Come this way,” she whispers and before them, where there hadn’t been before, is a twisted castle with an open drawbridge. “It’s quite melodramatic, I know. But it’s where he stays for now. Until later. When it’s time.”

Steve’s heart is thick and harsh in his chest, thinking of meeting someone who will love him, and not look at him as deviant. As he steps forward, she catches his arm. Her fingers are cold and steel. “Do not kiss him. Do not lose the necklace, if you do, you will be in danger.” 

Steve readies himself. He starts toward the stone castle, but she stops him once more. “He will appear as he will be, just differently.”

Steve has no idea what she’s talking about, he never does. He wonders if someone during his rescue (because he assumes he will be rescued) her son might be there – in Steve’s world. Or if he’s only having a dream while he dies.

“Shush, again,” she says. “He’ll be there in your world, eventually. Go.”

He steps toward the bridge and then finds himself not on the bridge at all, but in a small room with various books about and a young child racing around with a small machine of some sort in his hands. He skids to a stop and stares at Steve. “Who are you?”

Unsettled, Steve says, “I’m Steve. I’m looking for someone. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

The boy with thick dark curls that are far too long, and an enchanting smile looks up at Steve. “Oh no, you were looking for me.”

“I really don’t think so,” Steve says.

“You’re the human. I’m the half Fae, half human hybrid that my mom hides in this castle. ‘Cause, you know, she did the nasty with some human, and she got me. El daddy elf don’t like it too much.”

He hears the boy talking but he’s not sure he understands half of what he’s saying. “I’m not going to fall in love with a child.”

The boy sits down. He looks to be about eight or maybe ten on the outside. “Listen, big fella, I don’t make the rules in this god awful place, I’m just here to break them. If you don’t want to fall in love with me, because yuck.” He spits on the floor. “Then don’t. There’s no magic kiss that’s gonna set me free anyhow.”

Steve can’t help but feel a certain amount of rejection and he thinks maybe he should leave. He peers behind him but finds no door. He circles the room with his gaze, but still no door.

“Nope, no way out. There’s a bathroom and a bedroom through that archway, but nope. It’s like Rapunzel only not because I don’t have long hair and there’s no evil witch or anything. Just my mom. And she’s not a witch. Well, some times, but I think that’s normal for mothers, don’t you?”

Steve’s not exactly sure what to say to the boy. “I don’t know.” He feels off-kilter and searches around for a chair. 

“Hey, you gonna topple over or something?” the boy says and points to Steve’s chest.

When he takes a look, he finds that the small silver disk on the chain lays against a warm red stain near his heart. He doesn’t swoon, he’s a big muscular guy. But if he doesn’t sit down, he might fall down.

The boy shoves him into a chair; Steve has no idea where it came from. “Sit, before you keel over.” Steve follows orders. “Drink, it will help you.”

Steve sips from a goblet the boy produces as if out of thin air. It taste like wine but there’s a viscosity to it that’s wrong. His thirst drives him to drink it and he cradles the bowl of the goblet in his hands to drink. He’s greedy with it and knows it is rude.

“Take it easy there, pal,” the boy says and pulls the cup away. 

Steve lies back on the chair and his strength returns as the liquid suffuses through him feeling like it wraps around him as a warm blanket. “That’s good, thanks.” He checks out his chest and there’s a red pinpoint next to the silver coin. He picks at it until the boy tells him not to.

“Don’t do that,” the boy says and then drags over a stool. He hops on it and peels back Steve’s shirt. There’s a massive bruise on Steve’s chest and it almost looks like several puncture wounds.

“What? What happened to me?”

The boy cocks his head and shrugs. “Don’t worry, it shouldn’t kill you here. Not yet, anyway.”

“I didn’t feel it before,” Steve says and he knows that’s nonsensical. 

“It’ll come over you sometimes. Don’t worry,” the boy replies as he jumps down and goes to fetch a few oddly shaped instruments. “You wanna help me build?”

“Sure?” Steve thinks he must be dying on the plane, alone. Maybe this is some fevered dream the Fae have imparted on him to calm him as his life leaks out into the currents of the ocean.

“Don’t be silly, my son isn’t a fevered dream,” Nature says and Steve startles.

“Where did you-?”

“I thought, maybe you needed to know that you aren’t dreaming. This is the Realm of the Fae. You will spend some time with my son. Be careful what you do here, for it is very dangerous, though very generous.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Steve says and searches around for the boy.

She laughs next to him. “Here he comes.”

Steve looks behind him where she gazes and he’s abruptly thrown because he’s now sitting next to a stream and the boy looks about a half dozen years older. When the boy spots him, he says, “Oh, you again.”

“I take it you don’t like me?”

“Not yet, but I will. I can’t help feeling this way,” the boy says. “Because we haven’t really met yet, but we have.”

Steve thinks he’s getting a headache. He decides to take the bull by the horns. He sticks out his hand and says, “I’m Steve, Steve Rogers.”

The youth considers his hand, shakes his head, and then waves him off. “Nope, I don’t think so.” 

Steve drops his hand and wonders how long this will last. He’s probably drowning in the frigid artic waters right now. It shouldn’t take this long. 

“But I’m Anthony, soon to be Tony Stark,” the youth says and pitches a stone into the waters. 

“I thought you had to stay in the castle, in that little room?” Steve says.

“Oh I do,” Tony says. “But Mother sometimes changes the scenery. Right now, she’s cross at me because I wasn’t nice to you the other day. So she took me out of my workshop and plopped me on the side of a stream, but technically we are still in the Tower, in the castle.”

“Wow,” Steve says and appreciates his imagination a little more. 

“Don’t go thinking that this is your fevered dream again. Every time you do that, the time shifts because she reappears,” Tony says. He picks at the pebbles by the stream. “It’s giving me a headache.”

“Me, too,” Steve says. “But you were nice, and I’ve only been here a short time.”

Tony glares at him darkly. “You really don’t get the Fae Realm do you?”

Steve shakes his head. “I think I’m dying so nope, I really don’t.”

“Well, the Fae don’t run linearly in time.” He plucks out a stick from the pine needles lying about. Sketching out a line, he shows Steve. “That’s how you perceive time. Straight and narrow. Fae especially while in the Realm of the Fae, behind the Veil, see it like this.” He etches out a looping figure on the ground. “You ever hear of a Mobius strip?”

Steve lifts a shoulder and frowns.

“It’s complicated to describe or even draw.” He scribbles a curved line in the sand of the creek’s bank. “It has what’s known of as a homeomorphic surface where it’s only one sided, but both sides are the same.”

Steve squints at him. “Wh-what?”

“Just think of it this way, inside and outside exist on the same surface.”

Steve accepts it, because he doesn’t have the energy to really figure it out. “How is this important?”

“That’s how time runs here. For you, for me, for everyone. I met you just minutes ago, or when I was a baby.”

“How come I don’t remember that?” Steve says.

Tony taps the silver coin on his chest. “That protects you. Otherwise you’d fall out of time and who knows how long you’d sleep.”

“Sleep?”

“Yeah, humans have a tendency to lose themselves in the Realm.”

“You’re half human?”

“I accommodate. You don’t have to know how, right now. Eventually you’ll need to know,” Tony says. “You want something to eat?”

Suddenly Steve is starving. Even as he thinks it, he grows weaker. 

“Oh shit, I forgot,” Tony says and hastens to Steve’s side. “Here, here, drink this.”

The goblet re-appears and Steve drinks it without hesitation. It spreads the same heated healing through his wounded chest and eases the pain. His serum doesn’t seem to have the same healing effects here.

“Eat,” Tony says and offers him a tray of cheeses, crackers, tiny pies, and small cube like cakes. Where the tray comes from, Steve hasn’t a clue.

He picks up a few and samples them. “These are good.”

“Of course they are, they’re Fae. If you didn’t have that necklace, it wouldn’t give you any nutrients at all. You’d starve here.”

Steve nods as he bites into the palm sized pie. It’s filled with meats and cream sauce. “I know your mother told me.”

“Did she tell you it prevents the other Fae from seeing you?” Tony asks.

“She said it would hide me,” Steve concedes; he thinks that’s close enough.

Tony eats more of the small cakes. “Did she tell you that it also holds me here?”

Steve drops the pie. “What?”

“I can’t-.”

The world around him quakes and he’s in a dark space then, cold and hungry, freezing. He hears Nature’s voice. “Hold on, young one, hold on.”

He’s suddenly standing in the shadows of a long hall – it looks like a palace with its arching ceiling and high carved pillars. There are so many people about, dressed as if they are from the Renaissance but with trails of flowers, and weeds, and flakes of snow showering behind some of them. They’re tall and beautiful, colored in different hues from green to pale to ebony. He’s never seen people so ethereally beautiful, but then he realizes they are not people at all, they are Fae. 

They cannot see him and he clutches the disk to his heart. He hears the whispers, their scathing remarks. The babe is not the Consort’s, the Queen has laid with a human. The baby should be killed, the baby should be tossed to the human realm and wither and die. As he steps closer, he’s transported to another room, a large chamber, a nursery. 

“He will bridge the worlds,” Nature says as she cradles a baby in her arms and the Consort rumbles. The flowers are blackened and decaying in his anthers. The animals huddle in her streaming hair. 

“He is an abomination.”

“He will love one of them,” Nature says. “And with his love, he will bridge the worlds. He is under my protection.” She throws open her arms and Steve gasps, muffling it with his hand to his mouth. The babe has disappeared. “He is under my protection. He will change the world.”

“He will forsake you and everything you love, the Fae, to be human,” the Consort says. “He will hate magic. He will turn to science. I will cause the death of his Beloved, I will send my son after his love. It is the only way.”

“Then you forsake all of us.”

Even as Steve starts to react, to move out of the shadows, the room shifts and he’s standing in the middle of a courtyard. A young man sits on the small terrace wall to an overgrown garden; weeds and vines creep along the chipped stone. Steve cannot deny that he thinks this is pointless and painful to jump through years. 

“Tony?” Steve guesses.

The man twists around to face him and Steve’s shocked at his beauty as well as the maturation in his eyes and demeanor. While Steve can glean how the years have changed him, he can also see the playfulness etched around his eyes.

“Steve, you’re back,” he says and stands. There are chalk outlines of machines all over the stone work as if he’s been scribbling all day.

“Do you know what happened?”

“Which time, you come and go a lot you know,” Tony says.

Steve decides on a different tactic. “How long will I be here?”

“Years, hours,” Tony says and lifts a shoulder. “It really depends.”

Steve feels as if he’s only been here a few hours, yet at the same time he feels aged. “Is there somewhere to rest?” He’s suddenly very tired.

Tony considers him, and then with pressed lips agrees. “Sure, this way.” He gestures for Steve to follow him from the courtyard into the castle. It’s cold and the place is empty. As they walk the long hallways with little light, he asks, “How long have you been here?”

Tony looks over his shoulder at Steve. “As long as it takes.”

Sighing, Steve says, “You know it would be nice if someone answered one of my questions without circumventing it.”

Tony grins at him and then says, “Okay, hit me.”

With a flick of his eyebrows, Steve asks, “Do you know who your human father is?”

“Nope, I won’t know until I’m there.” Tony points down a long hallway and up a flight of stone steps. “And when that happens the Veil won’t allow me to remember any of this.”

This stops Steve in his tracks. “We won’t know one another?”

“I won’t know you, I’m not sure how it works for you, since you come from outside the Veil.” Tony ushers him up the stairs even though Steve works through the shock of knowing he will forget everything. “And then there’s the fact we repeat it over – a lot. Until it’s done.”

“Here, this way,” Tony says and they make the landing. Tony walks past several doors and gestures for Steve to follow him into a large bedroom. “Sorry, this is it. It’s my room. There really aren’t any other rooms that aren’t a complete mess.”

Steve nods and pulls off his shirt. He remembers Tony doing it before, but he can’t quite glimpse the images of the memory. It’s already half forgotten. “I can just sleep on the floor.” 

There’s only one bed and the light from outside is decidedly waning. 

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t sleep much,” Tony says. “Before you sleep, drink this.”

Again the goblet comes out and Steve drinks his fill, the ache in his chest a distant memory. He settles on the bed after Tony insists. When he closes his eyes, Tony sits on the edge of the bed and lays a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I always like to watch you sleep.”

As Steve closes his eyes, he says, “How come you get to remember everything we’ve done and I only know snatches.”

“Linearity verses curved, Steve.” 

Steve hums a little and then begins to drift into slumber. In the morning they start a routine. It will almost be normal, and linear as Tony calls it. Every day, when he first wakes up, Steve needs the goblet with the elixir in it before he can even move. Tony dresses his wound because it’s ugliest after he’s rested, and then it’s gone by the time Steve’s finished his drink and eaten some food. They spend a good portion of the day in a room Tony calls the workshop. Steve watches Tony intently and learns that he’s building something to bridge the gap, shred the Veil. 

At one point, Steve asks, “Why do you want to do that?”

“Why not?”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It could be,” Tony answers.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t.”

“It wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t dangerous,” Tony snickers and continues his task. “This whole place, the Fae, I want to explain it. There’s no such thing as magic. It’s only stuff we don’t understand.”

“So you’re a scientist.”

He thinks about it. “Yeah, maybe.”

 

Eventually, throughout the days, Steve wanders the castle alone, venturing into different empty rooms, the library, the kitchen with its cold hearth, and the overgrown garden. Sometimes when he’s wandering he steps into other times and gets to see Tony at various years throughout his life, though he never sees Tony older than about forty.

Steve finds a toddler Tony a ball of energy and fire. While a slightly older but not teenaged Tony is rambunctious and inquisitive, but the teenaged Tony is somber, almost too quiet in his reticence. Steve worries when he sits with the youth that he’s depressed, but Tony only shoves him away.

What he notices the most is that Tony is searching, even as a baby only gaining his feet, he’s pursuing something. Steve tries to ask but it’s only when he gets back to the adult Tony that he gets an answer.

“You’ve been gone too long, again,” Tony says and offers him the goblet because even as he enters the workshop, Steve staggers on his feet. 

“You’re always looking for something, what is it?” Steve says as he tastes the liquid. 

Tony concentrates on the workbench, on his sketches of some kind of mechanical man. “A way out, I told you that. A bridge, some way to get out.”

“I thought that was a given? I thought you were supposed to go into the human realm eventually.” Steve knows the coin on the necklace holds Tony here, but shields him.

“The Consort doesn’t want it to happen,” Tony says. “He’s never liked me.”

“But you’ll naturally go there, right?”

Tony meets his gaze and says, “Because if I can get there beforehand, maybe things will change.”

“Things?” Steve says and he knows this is one of those curved space issues again. 

Tony places his tools down and walks over to where Steve’s sitting on a pile of cushions. He kneels down and then sits as well. “The Consort will come after me, he’ll come after you. Each time it’s worse. Last time,” Tony grimaces and shudders. 

Steve reaches out and touches Tony’s hand. “Hey, what happened?”

“He tries to tear us apart, each time.” Tony places his hand on Steve’s chest, right where the wound is. “Somehow, last time, when I moved through the Veil – infected you.”

“He did?” Steve says.

Tony inhales, holds it, and then releases the breath before he tackles explaining to Steve. “The tesseract, you remember that?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah, of course, the big blue cube?”

“Yes,” Tony says. “It’s the thing that’s eating away at your chest. It’s not supposed to be there. You’re supposed to be frozen in ice without that wound until you get revived.”

Tony reaches out and his fingers linger on Steve’s chest – and even though he wears a simple tunic, one that Tony had given him, it feels as if he graces Steve’s flesh with his touch. “This time he has truly done you in. If I can stop it, it will all end.”

“End?”

“Traveling the curve of time, we always start over again, but the Consort, he’s changed things. If I don’t figure out a way to snap the curve, to rip it open, this time and forever you’ll be dead, and-.”

Steve swallows against the fear and says, “And?”

“And so will I,” Tony says. 

After, Steve begins again with a fresh goal for his journeys through the Fae castle. He wants to find out as much information as possible. He listens to conversations and hides in the shade of darkness since the coin strung around his neck protects him. He brings back all the information to Tony. They debate what it means that the Consort has his own army, that the Queen has made new enemies. 

All the while, Steve wonders what it means to be frozen in the ice. He thinks that the wound in his chest isn’t any better or worse that the chill of solitude under frozen water. But there are days that the goblet isn’t full, there are days when Tony cannot conjure it. He calls these his human days.

“I’m sorry, everyone has their faults,” Tony says and helps Steve back into the bed. They have been sharing it, quiet and peaceful through the night. 

“I don’t think your human side is a fault, Tony,” Steve says as he eases into the comfort of the bed. He tries not to think of it as their haven, but it’s too hard not to.

“Oh but you probably dislike my Fae side,” Tony says and covers him with thick blankets. He shivers under them. 

“No, I don’t see anything I dislike. In fact, I do like you, even though you have a tendency to be grandiose. I like you,” Steve scowls at himself. “Probably too much.”

“I like you too, more than that,” Tony says as he leans in, his breath warm and inviting over Steve. He’s eyes are lidded and his lips are only moments from Steve’s mouth. As he responds to Tony, the Queen’s words echo through his head.

_Do not kiss him_

Jerking back, Steve pushes against Tony and regrets it all at once when he sees the look of rejection. Before Steve can say anything, Tony gestures. “Hey, don’t worry about. No biggie, right?”

“I just, Tony, no don’t do that,” Steve says but he doesn’t have the strength to get up to follow him out of the room. The tesseract wound worming its way through his chest burns and he hisses as he collapses back onto the bed. 

It takes Tony two more days to conjure the goblet, and Steve drinks it greedily. He’s only half healed when it’s done and Tony has to work to bring about more of the elixir, but he does. Once he finishes, he looks wan and tired.

“Okay?” Steve says as he hands the goblet back to Tony who simply places it into the shadows of the room where it disappears again.

“It’s getting harder, that’s all,” Tony says and gets up from the bed as Steve climbs to his feet. He’s feeling better already. 

“The elixir?”

Tony nods and then waves to the whole castle. “Everything. It’s almost time again.”

Steve knows what he’s talking about, he feels it in his bones as if it’s inherently apart of him. “The curve of time, where you’ll traverse the realms?”

“Look at you, being all sciency.” Tony smiles at him. “Yeah, something like that. Once that happens and if I don’t cut the cord so to speak, the Consort will kill you before you wake and – well, let’s not talk about what he’ll do to me.”

Deciding not to quiz him on the particulars, Steve yanks on a new tunic and some pants. “I’m going to figure this out today.” 

“Okay?” 

“You want to come with me?” Steve says.

“I don’t think that’s possible. You’re the one traveling the strip. I’m just one of the points on it that you visit.”

“Okay, well, sit tight, I’ll be back.”

“Don’t be late,” Tony says and as Steve turns around, smiling at him.

The hallways are dark again with motes of dust in the little light that seeps in from the narrow windows. He follows the line of windows and realizes the motes of dust are actually the Fae flittering about him. He goes to a chamber, opens the door, and the Queen is waiting for him.

The tiny Fae about him transform and become her Court, her Guards, her Ladies in Waiting. He does not know if they see him now. Steve realizes he’s in a throne room and he looks down to find that he’s no longer wearing the simple handwoven clothing, but instead, a suit of knights armor that mimics the design of his Captain’s suit. 

Breathing steadily, forcing down any fears, Steve marches up to the throne where the Queen is seated and kneels down. He bows his head and waits.

“Stand, my young warrior.”

He follows her command. 

“What do you seek?”

“A way out,” Steve says. He keeps his voice tight, his eyes hard. He’s always had a soft spot for the Queen. She considers him with her haughty eyes and her tense mouth. Before she can speak, he adds, “One that saves Tony.”

“You have come to the wrong place, dear one. I have sought to save my son all these times, but it is not for me to decide,” the Queen says and her eyes are of mud and earth. She is Nature again, with creatures skittering about and long lakes pooling at her feet.

“There has to be a way. I’ve stood up to bullies, I’ve fought evil men, there has to be a way to defeat your Consort.”

She smiles and stands, the creatures about her feet cower as the harsh light of day and the cool breath of night mix to form the clouds and haze of fear. “You misinterpret. It is for you to decide if he will live or die.”

He hates this place, it’s a rage in his chest that’s consuming every fiber of his strength. But he fights it, moves past the weakness. “The Consort changed the rules, he’s changed how it plays out. Tony can’t survive, because the Consort used his son to wound me, make this wound in my chest and so I will die.”

Her gaze does not soften, but it grows all the more introspective, as if she has to learn to accept the Fate that has been given to them. She says as much, “That is not for me to change or decide.”

“You’re the Queen, he’s only your Consort.”

“You mistake my care for you for my disregard for the Consort. He is my balance, dear one.” There’s anger but not hatred in her voice, there’s a certain amount of exhaustion creeping along the sides of her face as if she’s slowly involuting into herself. “I cannot defy how he plays out his part. He balances what I create.”

“He destroys. Is that what this is? He destroys. You, you’re Nature and he’s, what? Chaos?”

“Time to go, little one.” And she puts up her hand and he feels the brunt of it, the way the vacuum of air pockets around him, causing him to gulp for breath. He stumbles and then finds himself at the doorway to Tony’s room again.

Yet, this time Tony’s only a teenager. He looks up at Steve. “Now you know.”

“I know that there’s no way to defeat him, the Consort, because he balances your mother,” Steve says and, using the wall as a brace, makes his way to the bed in the corner of the room. He hangs onto the bedstead. 

“There’s the rub, as they say,” Tony says.

“Have you always known?” Steve asks.

“No,” Tony says and sighs. “I suspected, but I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

Steve squeezes his eyes closed and feels the throb of pain pitch higher to become a persistent presence. 

Tony stands next to him, places a hand on his shoulder and, even before Steve opens his eyes, he knows that Tony is older once again. “This is the first time I’ve been through this part, the first time you’ve carried that wound. We’ll make it out of it and stop it. This time.”

“How? They balance one another, one’s Nature and the other is Chaos,” Steve says.

“Easy, we destroy both,” Tony says and it galls Steve. He gasps in surprise and Tony only lays a finger against his lips. “I’m not saying to commit matricide. But the Veil, I’m going to shred it. Once we get to the other side, I’m going to rip it apart and then there’ll be no way for them to follow us.”

“But if he’s already there?”

“Doesn’t matter, I think if I burn away the Veil, then the Fae in the human realm will die.”

Steve frowns. “What will that do to you?”

“I don’t know. But we don’t have a choice, he’s already planted the seed of destruction in your chest. We just have to figure out how to cut the bridge and then the tesseract link should be cut as well.”

The ache intensifies in his chest and he tumbles to the bed, feeling all the scrawny 90 pound weakling again. Tony lines his cheek with a callus hand and smiles down at him. “It’s been a good turn of events, don’t you think? You here, all through my life. It’s almost as if I grew up thinking about you, loving you.”

“You’re saying this because you think it will kill you to cut the Veil.” Steve says and it makes him sick at heart. “Don’t do it. I was ready to sacrifice my life before, I shouldn’t even have this life now.” For the first time, he accepts that he’s not dreaming, he’s not slowly dying in a fiery plane crash. He’s in the land of the Fae, dying of a tesseract wound implanted by the son of an insane Fae in an act of chaos to balance Nature. 

Tony smiles in soft waves around him. “Your life is my life. Rest now, I may be able to conjure the elixir later.” 

“Lie down with me?” Steve knows he sounds pathetic, but Tony’s touch is more than comfort.

For once, Tony doesn’t argue, he slides under the blankets and wraps his arm around Steve. He notches his head in the crook of Steve’s neck. “You didn’t want to kiss me,” he says after a turn.

“Your mother, the Queen, told me not to,” Steve whispers and the pain lances through his chest as if he’s admitted defeat. “I don’t know what it will do.”

“Reveal you, most probably,” Tony says. “The Fae can only see you if she allows it, or if the coin loses its power.”

“It holds you here, I could take it off,” Steve says.

“I know, but then he’d know where you are, and would ravage you,” Tony says and then caresses a hand along Steve’s chest. “Rest. I want to feel your heartbeat while you sleep.”

When Steve wakes again it is with Tony hunched over him, his hands on either side of Steve’s face, his voice pitched and strained, “Come on, Steve, come back.”

Steve murmurs but the words get stuck and he can’t keep his eyes open. 

“Damn it, damn it,” Tony says and he peers up at the ceiling as if talking to someone. “Don’t let this happen. You could help him, Mother, I know you could.” 

Shuddering, Steve grapples to respond to Tony but his limbs are laden and his will drained. Tony tears away at Steve’s tunic and cries out. “Mother, do something.”

Steve hears in the distance her voice. “You wish me to interfere. I have done enough for you already. If the Consort wins-.”

“If he dies, I’ll die with him,” Tony says.

“Don’t be melodramatic, you are too young to understand love.” Though Steve cannot see the Queen, he feels her near him. “But I will do this for you, but the sacrifice will be given.”

When he tries to refuse, his mouth only gulps in air and he feels her place a hand on his chest. The pain dissipates as the world around him redefines and he can see Tony once again. 

“Steve, Steve?” Tony says and cradles him in his arms. “I thought, damn it, I thought the tesseract had you.”

Steve holds onto Tony, runs his hands through the wild thick dark hair. He buries his face in Tony’s hair, closing his eyes. 

“The tesseract, it drilled a hole in your chest,” Tony says and moves away. As they part, Steve studies the wound. It’s an ugly thing now, it never goes away. Tony pulls the goblet out of the air again and offers it to him. “We don’t have much time.”

Steve drinks his fill but the wound never truly heals anymore. “Maybe we’ve had it all along.”

“What do you mean?”

Steve lifts a shoulder and he hadn’t been prepared to answer until Tony asked. “The coin. Why don’t I give it to you?”

“They’ll see you,” Tony says. 

“Are they here now?”

Tony looks around and says, “Not that I can tell.”

“Then take it,” Steve says and pushes up to give the necklace to Tony, but he stays Steve’s hand. 

“No, there’s a better way, I just haven’t found it yet.”

“It’s not about being clever Tony, it’s about finding a way to stop him,” Steve says. “Sometimes you have to lay down on the wire.”

“I’m not entirely sure what that’s supposed to mean, but I think I’d rather cut the wire,” Tony says.

“Don’t be like that,” Steve says and reaches for the chain. 

“No.” Tony grabs his hand, and they’re sitting on the bed, together, hands entwined, heated from their words. “I don’t want to lose you to them. How do you think it’s been here, where no one accepts me? You’re the only one. If I lose you, what will I have left?”

“You said it yourself the time is coming where you’ll have to leave-.”

“I won’t go,” Tony says. “Fuck their convoluted curved time.” 

“You know it’s not that easy-.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says and he keeps his gaze down. “We can’t stay here, but if we go there.”

“We die,” Steve says. “I think he’s already there.”

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t seen him the last few times, I traveled. He must be there,” Steve says.

Tony jumps up. “Damn it, why didn’t you tell me. We don’t have a choice, we have to do something now about the Veil.” He rushes away from Steve, disappearing out the door of the bedroom.

Scrambling, Steve races after him. He leaves behind his shirt and follows as Tony dashes off to his workshop but before he enters the Queen blocks his passage.

She glares down at him with the eyes as harsh as storm, the earth quaking in her stare. “Kiss him.”

“You told me not to,” Steve says. He cannot judge what she’s playing at – trying to figure out the Fae is like trying to catch the wind in your hands.

“Kiss him and everything changes,” she says and she is Nature again – kind and gentle.

“That’s what happens all the other times, isn’t it? You’ve done this a million times before. We’re playing out your little game.” Steve steams – he’s never hated her before now, but he tastes the bitter root she’s fed him. “You wanted me to fall in love with him, for what ends? To play this game over and again?”

She shifts her gaze and the animals tiny and weak jitter in her hair. “It isn’t as simple as that. I’ve look for a way to change this – the Consort – he’s done it. He’s going to kill you and I will lose my son forever.”

“And if I kiss him?”

“The clock starts over again. I can try again.”

“How many times have you tried? Why do you try if he’s your balance?”

She sinks further into herself, she ages becoming withered like the Autumn. “He tips the scales now, he furthers his order.”

“What’s his order?” That question comes from behind her and she steps aside to find Tony waiting. “What’s his order – other than Chaos – what does he want?”

“He wants Chaos, yes but he was total subjugation of humans. To do this, he will use magic against you.”

“Magic is only science unexplained,” Tony snaps.

Her eyes soften as she looks at her son. “And that is why I love you.”

“So he’ll annihilate us and how does that work for him?” Tony says and he’s jumpy, nervous. They don’t have much time.

“If he’s able to completely erase all of what you wrought, then the Veil will expand, it will fall over all realms and the darkness will descend.”

“And the darkness is the loss of all knowledge? Just because he kills us?” Tony asks.

“Because he prevents you from traversing the bridge this time. Once the magic worms into your heart,” the Queen says as she looks at Steve. “You will no longer be able to survive, neither of you will survive. The deal with be set.”

“So how do we stop it?” Tony says and even as he asks, the Queen fades into the shadows. He throws his hands up and yells, “That’s freaking wonderful, throw some more hocus pocus at us and don’t explain a god damned thing.”

Steve grabs Tony’s hand and says, “We can kiss.”

“Kiss?” He licks his lips.

“It will start the cycle over again. She can try again.”

“Do you want to be her pawn? His pawn?” Tony says. 

Steve shakes his head. “No, but do you see another way? You have to get there before he can kill both of us. You haven’t figured out how to shred the Veil. If the Veil overcomes the human world -.”

“Dark Ages takes on a whole new meaning,” Tony says and Steve raises his eyebrows. “What? I’ve studied human history, give me a break. I did my homework.”

“Okay then, you don’t want to kiss-.”

“Hey I want to kiss, that’s a totally different issue.” Tony walks into his workshop with Steve following. “But what I don’t want is to play this game anymore. I have to get there, shred the Veil.”

Steve considered the problem. It’s been so long since he woke up here in the Fae world. Though the confusion reigns, there are pieces that are easy to decipher. “The Queen and her Consort balance one another. But he’s tipped the balance by trying to kill me before you traverse the Veil.”

“Right.” Tony taps his face with one of this tools as he thinks.

“Kissing starts the whole Mobius strip thing over again. Do you remember anything, anything that’s different from all the other times?” Steve says, because he can only remember one time while Tony remembers all of it.

“The wound, that’s new,” Tony says. 

Steve peers down at the injury. “It has a seed of the tesseract in it?”

“Something like that, yes. The tesseract controls space.” Tony holds up his hand. “If you have the tesseract, it would make sense. Yes, yes, that makes perfect sense.” He points to the coin. “It’s hiding you, concealing you and the tesseract. It also pins me here.”

“Then take it,” Steve says and moves to loop it from his neck.

Tony grasps his hand. “Once you take it off, he will see you, regardless of what realm you’re in and he’s in. He’ll see you and destroy you.”

“But the tesseract changes that, doesn’t it?” 

“He’s planted it there for a reason,” Tony says. He grimaces. “Damn it, he’s using you as the device to keep me here but then again also the device to get me there.” 

Steve frees his hand of Tony’s grip and brings the chain up over his head. He hands the coin to Tony. “I’ve lived a life, I’ve lived two. I’ve been lucky enough to live one with you. Anything more would be greedy.”

“Steve, no,” Tony says and curls his fingers around the metal as the floor beneath their feet rumbles. 

“The tesseract controls space right?” Steve says and touches the open wound that leaks and an arc of energy sizzles on his fingertips. “Then take control, Tony.”

Tony steadies himself and Steve can see him mentally prepare as the room collapses in on itself, as the space around them shifts and changes and whirls around them in a collage of colors and shapes. Reality contracts.

Steve has been seen.

The Consort, their enemy, approaches. The thunder of hooves pounds like a storm toward them.

Tony reaches out, and places his hand on the source of the tesseract, on Steve’s heart. The touch is electric, tendrils of the tesseract energy crawl out of Steve’s flesh, searing and fire but cold and heartless. He feels the frigid wasteland, he feels the rush of ice, the brunt of water overcome him, the cold fire of the tesseract spreads through him and out.

Space twists, constricts, and then flares outward like a spectacle of fireworks.

And then the room implodes in colors and waves of gravity as the density of life pounds against them. The Consort rides forward on his fetid steed, anthers dripping in blood and decaying flesh. It is here to take them, it is here to quiet their battle, to win the war against reason. It is here to devour them.

Before Steve can stop the long slithering arcs of tesseract shoot into Tony. Steve screams and the Consort cries out. The Fae’s eyes are crimson and blood tears stream over his face. The Queen watches in silence and stillness. She does not stop the sacrifice.

“Tony,” Steve begs and the pain draws out of him, the lightning of the tesseract piercing Tony’s chest. This isn’t what Steve wanted, what he hoped for. And then the monstrosity of the Consort is upon then, the rank odor of the Fae more beast like than beautiful. 

Steve holds onto Tony and knows the only thing he can do, is to stop it. Start over. He seizes Tony in strong arms, enveloping him in his embrace. Leaning in, he presses his lips to Tony’s – who is wrapped in the agony of their tesseract union. 

The Consort drives his anthers towards them like a battering ram. Steve kisses, deeply, completely. He cups Tony’s face, holding him, exploring his mouth, tasting him, and knowing him with just this kiss. Tony gives back through the pain draining into him. Yet the battle isn’t over, the Consort runs them through, spearing them, tearing them asunder.

Tony falls out of Steve’s arms, he’s on his knees, his mouth open in an empty mouthed scream. The tesseract bored into his chest. The Consort cackles and Steve has no weapons but his hands. Leaping at the Fae, Steve clutches his throat, knowing it is all for naught. 

They wrestle, the world a jumble of ruin around them. The Queen watches as Tony collapses in a heap on the floor. She cries and whispers to Steve as he fights the thing that had been her balance, her mate, “Your necklace.”

And then he sees it, dropped from Tony’s opened hand on the floor. He doesn’t know why she directs him to the thing. But something drives him to scramble for it. It’s been his saving grace throughout his stay in the realm. He stretches for it as the Consort digs fingers into Steve’s throat. Barely reaching it, Steve grasps it, the tiny coin and abruptly he holds his shield. 

In one swoop he slices up and into the Consort near his jugular. The shield’s edge cuts and opens up the artery.

No blood gushes out but the whole of the world around Steve splinters and he along with it. He knows nothing but the brush of death’s breath against his face. It is a frozen wash of air. Frigid, bitter, and unforgiving.

CHAPTER 3: Soon to be

The first thing that he experiences is sound- beeping and a strange swooshing noise- as he climbs his way to consciousness. He hears people talking in the background. 

“We’re not doing this your way, not this time.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but this is the only time I ever found a frozen war hero.”

“Don’t take credit for something you didn’t do.” 

Steve recognizes one of the voices. He tries to lift his lids but it’s too difficult, slumber holds him paralyzed in its grip. Even without sight, he feels the world differently – there’s a heaviness to it that sinks into his marrow, hums along his bones.

“I realize I had to rely on your financing for this operation since the WSC wasn’t interested, but -.”

“A fake 1940s recovery room in the middle of SHIELD New York is not a good idea.” There’s a shuffling and then an added, “Trust me, I know.”

Steve peels open his eyes and the room resolves around him. He’s in a hospital bed; that much is obvious. There are machines around him he doesn’t recognize; wires are attached to him. He lifts up his hand and there’s a small clip on his middle finger. He shakes it off and sits up, the wires strain and pop. The beeping around him intensifies.

Standing near the door, he sees two people, but he only focuses on one. “T-t.” His voice feels unused, papery.

They jerk around to look at him and say _Captain_ in unison. 

He turns to the one he knows, saying, “Tony?”

The man he doesn’t recognize places hands behind his back, his black leather coat draped to the floor, his eye patch unmoved on his stone cold face. “And you know Stark how?”

Steve opens his mouth but can’t find a plausible answer. He doesn’t even know where he is, or what’s going on. 

Tony holds up his hand to quiet Steve. “Let me handle this.”

The stranger arches his brow and says, “You better.”

“That’s a great threat, now out,” Tony says and ushers him out of the door. Tony murmurs something to the man but Steve doesn’t catch it. Once the man is gone, Tony hurries to Steve’s side. “God, finally, finally.”

He’s kissing Steve, over and again like he’s hungry for it, like he’s been deprived for decades. “Waited so long for you to follow.”

“Tony?”

“Long story, Steve, but you’re here now.”

“Here? Where?” Steve says. Something’s wrong, off. 

Tony places his forehead against Steve’s and says, “We’re in the human realm. We did it, god, we did it.”

“Did it?”

“I don’t know what you did after the tesseract debacle, but you stopped the whole cycle. You killed him, somehow. You remember, right?” 

Steve nods, but doesn’t understand. “How do you know he’s dead?”

“I used to start over again, I mean all over again. But this time I started in Afghanistan, and this happened,” Tony says and tugs open his shirt to show Steve a glowing disk implanted in his chest. 

“What is that?”

“A little token of my time in Afghanistan as well as what happened in the realm, I think.” Tony covers up again. “It never happened before, not in any of the times I traveled through the Veil. And I can’t see it anymore.”

“The Veil?” 

Tony looks to the side and Steve sees a slight glistening in his eyes. He bows his head and answers, “The way back. I can’t see it. I don’t know if the Veil is there, because the way back is gone.”

“So the way here is probably?”

“Gone as well. And we both remember, it never happened this way before.”

“I think I killed your mother’s Consort,” Steve says. “He was her balance.” He wonders if there’s consequences for their actions. Lingering consequences.

There’s a loss in Tony’s eyes that Steve put there and it reminds him of the ache in his chest. 

“I’m sorry.”

Tony clasps Steve’s hand and holds it to the mechanical disk in his chest. “Don’t be, I’m not. I can feel the loss but what I also feel is what I’ve gained.” 

Steve smiles and remembers what Nature, or the Queen had once told him – that they would save one another, and that her son would love him. He squeezes Tony’s hand and then asks, “How long do I have?”

“Have?”

“I suppose I’m on medical leave, but the war-.”

“Oh that’s another thing-.”

Tony tells him, explains everything to him. He’d been in the realm, through the Veil for over 70 years. In human terms he slept in the ice. The tesseract had changed everything, it had been the one mistake the Consort made. He’d thought it would kill Steve, but it only served to allow them a way to break free of the cycle. 

Eventually, Tony convinces the stranger – Nick Fury – to release Steve into his custody – though it is termed more like Tony is to be some kind of modern day guardian for Steve. He’s hardly floored by modern technology especially after spending 70 odd years in a magical castle with Tony. 

They’ve know each other so long that Steve finds it hard to think that this is really only their first truly free moment without wounds or monsters after them.

After they return to Tony’s home, in a Tower no less, and they sit by a fireplace with wine. Steve asks, “Are you still?” He can’t find the words so he sidetracks. “Does it hurt?”

“What?” Tony furrows his brows, then understands what Steve’s referring to. “Oh, this, no only when I breathe.”

Steve must look stricken but Tony laughs it off. “I’m joking. It’s fine. It helps keep me alive. Geez, Steve, stop making that face.”

“But, I did that to you,” Steve says and points to the glowing light.

“You did nothing of the sort. This was done by terrorists, and a little of my own weapons,” Tony says with a shrug without more explanation. 

They lapse into silence but the weight hangs heavily and Steve cannot move forward without knowing. “Do you, are you still Fae?

Tony hasn’t stop touching Steve, any chance he gets. But now his hand on Steve’s shoulder stops and drops. “Does it matter?”

“No.”

Tony inhales, places his wineglass on the table and says, “Only a little bit?”

Steve laughs. “How does that work?”

“It means I can still feel it, but I can’t make anything happen. There’s no magic anymore,” Tony says and while he doesn’t look exceptionally sad about it, there’s a mournful glint to his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

“Stop apologizing. I wanted this, remember. I hate magic, I want sound scientific explanations,” Tony says.

“For everything?” He leans it, allowing the balance to draw him closer, force Tony to move into him or slip away. He chooses the former. Their lips dance, tease one another, until Steve cannot wait and succumbs to the force of it. Even though it is not their first kiss, it feels pure and perfect. It wraps and evolves, it covers and continues. It moves through them into something substantial and nourishing, something that was impossible within the realm of the Fae. 

Magic and fantasy is one thing.

But this, Steve is sure, this is real. Beyond the Veil – this is real.

**Author's Note:**

> Tiny bit over 10,000 words but I tried, I really tried to get rid of the excess!
> 
> The changes in tense from chapter 1 and Chapter 2&3 were done on purpose and the author is not crazy.


End file.
